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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Oh, Miss Crabtree!

Several years ago, I bought a braid of fiber from Kristin at All Spun Up for a spinalong but never spun it. When it arrived, I thought that the colors just weren't me, so I put it away (fiber hoarder that I am) for a later time.

When I decided to host the spinalong in the All Spun Up group on Ravelry, this braid was a frontrunner to be spun first. I asked the advice of the group, and most people who responded agreed that it was high time that I showed Miss Crabtree some attention. So I pulled her out and started spinning her when the spinalong officially started.

This particular braid was a BFL/silk blend; I don't remember the exact proportions, and it's not written on the bag that the fiber came in, but I suspect it was something like 85/15. I decided to spin it from one end to the other and then chain ply, with the goal of getting a three-ply fingering weight in the end, but apparently I can't spin anything that has silk in it in any way other than super thin. My finished yarn, even though it's a three ply, is still pretty much laceweight. And it's just over 600 yards, meaning I had 1,800 yards of singles.

As iffy as I was about the fiber (and the singles while I was spinning it, I'll be honest), I adore the finished yarn. It looks so much like fall to me, like ripening apples on a tree whose leaves are starting to lose the bright green of summer. Rather than packing this yarn away, as I so often do with my handspun skeins once they're done, I've left it out to look at for a while until it calls to me and tells me what it wants to be.